The Garden State has given us a great many things, like The Boss and Ol’ Blue Eyes, the Devils and Disco Fries. For those of us with heavier tastes, New Jersey has got us covered, too.
Though perhaps perennially overshadowed by neighbouring New York state, Jersey has birthed countless bands in the worlds of rock, metal, punk and hardcore that have changed the culture in their own unique ways. That includes arena dominators like Bon Jovi, but also the sounds that came out of the Stone Pony, Trax East studios, the Nineties’ New Brunswick basement scene and more.
But which New Jersey heavy-music band is the best of the bunch? We asked the fans, and these were the top five vote-getters
E. Town Concrete
There’s a case to be made that for some Jerseyites, you’re either an E. Street fan or an E. Town stan.
Founded 30 years ago in the town of Elizabeth as a thugged-up, chug-forward kind of metallic hardcore band, E. Town progressively became more of a rap-metal force that careened slick-and-funky bass lines and Anthony Martini’s motor-mouthed rhymes off of a series of mosh-inducing rhythms.
Though the group haven’t made a full-length since 2004’s Made for War, they dropped their cement-cracking “Drones for Xmas” single late last year as a gift to the faithful.
The Misfits
While Misfits had an inauspicious, synth-wacky start to their career, it didn’t take long for Lodi’s finest to find their true path as the kings of guitar-crunching horror-punk. And no doubt about it, Misfits are the band on this list who’ve had the most cultural cache ever since.
They inspired the early underground hardcore scene with shocking lyrics, creep-filled hooks and Glenn Danzig’s post-Elvis sneering. They made fans of Metallica, who helped spread Misfits’ ghoulish message to the masses with their “Green Hell” and “Last Caress” covers. They just headlined one of the stages at Coachella. And, hell, you’d be hard-pressed to spit and not hit someone in a Crimson Ghost T-shirt at any given heavy concert.
Sure, they came in No. 4 in this poll, but for many fans, Misfits are No. 1 with a “Bullet.”
Lorna Shore
Are Lorna Shore the most extreme band to ever come out of the Garden State?
That’s a question for metalheads to ponder for years to come, but when it comes to this particular poll it’s fair to say that the long-running deathcore group specialize in a savage kind of mega-blasted, hyper-shredded and revoltingly bree’d style of music quite unlike the rest of this week’s major vote-getters.
Lorna Shore’s history is full of intensely violent and virtuosic moments, though the current, hellfire-flaring era with frontman Will Ramos has soared the band into new extreme heights. And Revolver readers hope the pain remains for years to come.
Overkill
A damn deluge of praise came flooding in for Overkill, and we can’t overstate how that’s still not enough to celebrate the awesomeness of these iconic first-wave thrashers.
Since 1980, the Jersey Boys have managed to present an affable, hard-partying vibe with a take-no-shit kind of street toughness, ram-jamming 20 full-lengths with nuclear thrash beats, rocket-launcher guitar solos and the apocalyptic power-screech of mightily mustachioed frontman Bobby Blitz.
Needless to say, many metalheads have been under the influence of Overkill’s commanding catalog since the Eighties. And if you don’t like it, well — fuck you, and then some!
The Dillinger Escape Plan
To have sat here and calculated every vote cast for the Dillinger Escape Plan would have been a thing of folly. Let’s just say this: The Jersey-born technical destructionists won this one by leaps and bounds. And why the fuck wouldn’t they?
From the Barnum-and-Bailey-meets-Bungle-meets-Deadguy dexterity of the early Running Board days, to their conceptually-twisted collabs with Mike Patton, to the metalcore-expanding expressiveness of their run of records with vocalist Greg Puciato, Dillinger have never failed to impress. Their stage shows over the years have been just as legendary, pairing technical wizardry with fire-breathing and the legitimate threat of getting your head cracked open by Ben Weinman’s ever-swingin’ guitar.
For all those reasons and more, that’s why Dillinger Escape Plan are New Jersey’s favorite force of fusion-driven fury.